


Sweetheart, what have you done to us?

by iamtheleftbrain



Category: The Great Gatsby (2013)
Genre: M/M, One Shot, Short & Sweet, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-15 17:36:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19300522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamtheleftbrain/pseuds/iamtheleftbrain
Summary: Jay has been dead for a few decades, and Nick still isn't over him.





	Sweetheart, what have you done to us?

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for my English Final and after i turned it in i avoided my English teacher because i was embarrassed anyways I am posting it here because i never got any validation for it

The bustling city gets swept from the horizon as my speeding train cart goes along its track. East Egg is pushed aside, and the eyes of T.J Eckleberg follow me. 

My stop is at West Egg, new-old money. Where people who once lived their life to the fullest were barely living at all. Residents have seen the rise and fall of New York.

My old home is just half an hour away from the station. I step off onto the platform, and it looks exactly the same as I had left it. 

I take a minute to sit on a bench, rest my wobbly, old knees. I remember this bench. It was the same bench I had once called home during a blacked out excursion. 

Nostalgia ages like fine wine, and I plan on getting drunk on this trip. 

I grab one of those new aged cabs. It's modern, sleek, and bright yellow. New York was always ahead of its time. 

I lay the bundle of flowers on the fine leather seat next to me. 

The cab driver asks, "Special night for you 'nd the missus?" 

"Something like that." I answer.

"It your anniversary or sum'fin'?"

"No," I said.

He dropped me off at my destination without another word. My old home is just a few yards ahead of me. I can feel the electricity that touched my young skin back in the day, but it wasn't the same. I didn't feel charged. 

I look at my watch. I'm a tad early, so I take a moment to admire Gatsby isolated castle as I walk. 

It was quiet. 

As if his home had been mourning him ever since. It was unkempt, almost in ruins. It had lost its radiating energy of 'anything is possible'. Now it's sucking in energy, saving it up for the next pretty fool to be infatuated with the American Dream of love.

I'm at my front door. No one has lived here since I moved. You could tell. The beautiful vines that elegantly wrapped the columns and railings, now grew between the weathered cracks in the windows and doors. Concealing what was once inside. Last time I was in this house I didn't feel all that up to living.

I continue my walk, roses and lilies in hand. I left the daisies at home.

I manage to get past the post-apocalyptic castle gates with ease. 

I walk down the once beautiful pathway that is now a monochromatic, dull sidewalk. I know it's there before I see it. I've taken this walk so many times over my years.

A grand tombstone fit for a king. It was surrounded by wild plants, and bouquets of flowers that I had to start piling up after I couldn't find anywhere to sit.

A beautiful, worn fountain lay behind the gravestone. It was no longer gushing water out of the little angels mouth. Moss had infested the corners.

The flowers were dead and the grass was so overgrown you wouldn't have been able to see a standard tombstone. 

I make the treacherous journey from the gravel through the jungle of grass to Mr. Gatsby.

"Hello, Gatsby. I'm a little early. 5:56pm."

He didn't respond.

"We haven't spoken in a moment have we? What's it been, five years?" 

I took a minute to sit. My wrinkled, stiff hands pushed the grass away to make a nice seat next to the stone. I put the flowers in my lap, and relax.

"Well, yes, I have gotten old, so it's a little hard to get down." I touched what's left of my silver hair. 

"Let me tell you what I've been up to. I know you didn't ask, Gatsby, but you are dead.

"I was 65 last time we saw each other, and I had just been offered this great opportunity I couldn't pass up. So, I left after a terribly wretched goodbye to you. Do you remember? I cried on the plane ride. The stewardess kept having to give me tissues. Anyway, it's been amazingly bittersweet down there, Gatsby. In Los Angeles. I'm almost a famous author down there." 

I grab at the grass around me and play with it. My eyes start to burn. 

"Anything new down there, bud?" My voice is strained, but I don't think he'd mind. "Any undiscovered bugs infest your coffin lately?" 

He did not respond. I was used to this. 

"Right. You might be wondering why I came all the way down here to crack jokes about your decomposition," I said. I took a deep breath. "I'll tell you later. I have to tell you stories first. You will not believe what an old silver fox can get up to in Los Angeles..." 

I told stories upon stories upon stories that I'm sure if Gatsby were still alive I would have killed him with sheer boredom. I had the time of my life sitting with him though. No one would listen to the ramblings of an old man except a dead man. 

 

I was at home one morning. One of the rare days Gatsby didn't have any parties the night before. I was eating over salted eggs. It was a nice summer morning. Maybe in June or July. My house got so hot in those months. I opened all the doors and windows to have some cool air blow through. 

One of the things that blew through my front door was a handsome man with tanned skin.

Gatsby was wearing a pinstripe bathing suit with a straw hat. He was out of breath and his face was red and glistening around the cheeks and forehead. Like he ran here. 

I, dressed in nothing but a pair of boxers and a off-white tank top, felt exposed. 

"Did you run?" I asked. I remained on my seat at the table.

"Huh?" He took a deep breath. "No. How would you like to go out on my boat today?" 

I said, "I would like to very much. Now?" 

"Yes, now! If not now, when?!" He laughed. 

I met him on my wild, plant friendly porch. He had his eyes closed to the sun, soaking up it's light. When he heard my obnoxious im-here!-cough he turned to me with his soft and piercing blue eyes. He smiled and I fell in love with him. That was a long time ago.

 

I remember that Gatsby. I choose to remember that Gatsby. Not the one driven to obsession of love. Not the one bleeding out in a pool. The one in the ground. 

"Do you remember that night? That night I told you you cannot repeat the past? When you looked up towards the stars and saw beauty and potential and whatever else you might have seen. That's what I felt watching you.

"Especially that night. The party lights dimmed, soft jazz music in the back, and the pool reflection shining onto your handsome face. You believed anything was possible when you saw the stars, and I believed anything was possible when I saw you." 

The sun was setting.

"Does that make me strange, Gatsby? For loving you?"

I had no idea what he would have said if he were alive. I can usually guess, but this was different.

"When I'm alone, sometimes, I wonder what I'd be like if you had loved me back instead of loving Daisy. Maybe you'd still be alive. Maybe we'd both be dead...or in jail.

Daisy is out there, watching her second child graduate from some fancy college I can't bother to learn the name of, and living the comfortable life she always dreamed of. And you're a skeleton. In a box. In the ground. 

"And I'm here. Almost 40 years later, still grieving."

The sun has set almost completely. A small sliver of fluorescent red, orange, and yellow was left of the sun. Cotton candy colors filled the rest on the sky. I start to cry.

"I was diagnosed with liver cancer a few weeks back. Probably all those alcoholic tendencies." I stand up with a fight back from my arthritis. "Doctor didn't give me much time. Wanted to keep me hooked up to machines. I don't want that."

I hold the carefully wrapped flowers to my chest. They smell of plastic, and have the obviously-fake-flower waxy look.

I sniff. "I thought... I thought since it's most likely my last visit I should leave you with some flowers that'll never die, ya' know?" 

I set the flowers down in the grass. The tombstone is a tombstone, and it will not change no matter how I look at it. But oh, do I try every time I visit. 

"I love you, Gatsby. I hope we get to see each other soon." I kiss his tombstone, and I let myself through the gate. 


End file.
